84 AE zirconium O2 sensor melted…

Which "sensor light" is on?. I've been through multiple O2 sensors on my 84T and don't recall ever seeing a sensor light.

the main sensor light on the dash up in the left hand corner (on digital dashes); the orange/yellow one that says 'sensor' when it lights up. this is the one that in order to turn the light off, you have to manually reset it by pressing the switch located up in the dash behind the glove box. it should only come on at 30,000, 60, and so on…

yes, the male/female connector assembly is supposed to clip into that bracket to keep it off the manifold.

thought so. strange, my 87 did not have this piece… maybe it was removed previously, so i was curious

You may experience a variety of abnormal idle/starting conditions due to intermittent connections or possible shorting, yes. If this is the original O2, it's probably due for replacement.

it already has some slight hesitations at start up and idle and sometimes hesitates when on the throttle, but this is seldom. i should get another one, even though the car is only at 50,000 original miles

Those white Sumitomo connectors on the earlier models break with age. Nissan switched to a different material that is grey in later models. If you have a pick-n-pull nearby, you can harvest that 3 pin connector from anything late 80's to late 90's Nissan/Infinity. A new NTK O2 sensor will have a new male connector, you only need the female harness-side connector. Your cooked harness-side connector should be easily broken apart with a pair of pliers and doing this carefully should keep the factory crimped terminals intact. De-pinning the grey donor connector is not difficult and can be done with a dental style pick or small jewelers flat blade screw driver. Then insert the pins from your harness in the same order on the new connector housing. Same method as modifying the factory harness for a PRW2 connector.

unfortunately, i don't have access to any pick-n-pulls as they don't have many junk yards here in the UAE like they do in the U.S., so i am pretty relying on the mail system. I saw an NTK sensor online but it was the smaller titania, however I found some others that have the grey style connector, also nissanpartsdeal still has the OEM sensor available too. I can try this fix on the pins for the female connector. doesn't seem too difficult a task, other than that it is very hard to work in that area where the sensor is located, let alone get my hands down in there.

I would do this rather than cutting and splicing in new wires, unless the contacts in the housing are damaged.

agreed. i took another look at the connector and it doesn't look as bad as i thought, however i can see the internals through the cooked portions of the plug.

If you want, i have some grey female connector housings, i could de-pin one and ship it to you. lemme know.

I'm open to that sir, so if you can send 'em, i'll take 'em. how much do you want for it? and can you ship to military APO?

But, learning to de-pin and re-pin these white connectors is a good skill to learn, because you have a lot of them in your AE.

yeah for sure. all those connectors always seem to just go to crap. fortunately my Z31 is in pretty darn good shape and most things under the hood are pretty clean, but not all. any ideas on how to replace or repair all the little wire boots that tend to detach away from most of the connectors? think TPS, and AAR valve connections for example.... those are always falling apart on these cars.

So what I have decided to do temporarily, is put some electrical tape around the O2 connector and try to seal off and cover the melted areas and then remount it to the plug bracket. that way its away from the exhaust and is still intact. i just hope it doesn't have some kind of short which may have caused it to melt, but I still think it was the exhaust heat anyways. once I get the new sensor and plug terminals, i can repair those and then manually turn that reset switch under the dash and turn that sensor light off. hopefully all will run better afterwards.

listen, thanks a bunch for the information. really helps. appreciate it.